


The Mockery Sun of Bolingbroke

by Sir_Redcrosse



Category: 14th Century CE RPF, Richard II - Shakespeare
Genre: Angst, Cousin Incest, Innuendo, Kings ruining each other's dreams, M/M, No Sex, Paranoia, Plantagenets being Plantagenets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-09
Updated: 2013-01-09
Packaged: 2017-11-24 06:32:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/631479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sir_Redcrosse/pseuds/Sir_Redcrosse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Henry Bolingbroke, now King Henry IV, is still settling into his new position when Richard makes an unexpected and unannounced return in the middle of the night for an unpleasant walk down memory lane. But how much of Henry's memory is accurate? How many of Richard's caustic words are true?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Mockery Sun of Bolingbroke

**Author’s Note:** Reader, be warned that there is perhaps little accuracy to be found here, either historically or rooted in the play. Think of it as a fantasia on a theme.

* * *

 

Bolingbroke, nay “His Royal Majesty, Henry, fourth of that name,” sat uneasily on his bed. His mind was overactive with wrath and excitement, sorrow and elation all at once. As he took his new-won crown from off his freshly regal head and set it beside him, he contemplated the face of his deposed cousin who only a few days ago [or had it been months?] had given it over to him.

The weighty round of gold now seemed to him to be more weighted down by care than by adorning jewels. He could not bear to look on it, removing his shirt to cover it once he’d placed it on the table near his bed, atop the Scriptures. Sitting there in contemplation, his eyes could not avoid the heap, knowing the diadem lay there. Half his mind said to put it in the furthest corner of his room, while the other condemned him for being so fearful of a mere symbol of the position which he had proved himself more deserving than his childhood friend had. Was he not now in possession of those properties that were his? Were the people not relieved of a despot? There was no need for him to feel shame at having taken up the greatest responsibility of protecting this noble island.

The light was out, but even so he sensed the crown near him and turned away from it in a vain attempt to ignore the feeling of its oppressive presence. Looking out the window, there were no stars to count in distraction, and so with great resistance he fell asleep briefly. Henry had only just closed his eyes when they forced themselves back open in terror at the sound of the heavy bedchamber door creaking open.

“Who is it that comes at such an hour?” he shouted.

A familiar whisper came back: “Who else, fair cousin?”

At the sight of Richard, there in his bedchamber when he should be many miles hence, Henry’s blood ran cold. He crossed himself for fear of an evil spirit in familiar form and said, “How can you be here? You cannot. This… this is—“

“Unwelcome? Are we unwelcome in your chambers, Henry? There was a time, you will recall, when your door was never locked and you remained awake in expectation of our arrival. Is that not so?”

“That was many years ago, your high—I mean, Richard. And you seldom came to me.”

“And yet you never locked it to me, just the same.”

 

The bright moon and sand-numerous stars lit up the condescending smile of his childhood friend. Richard moved towards the table and picked up the crown, circling it back and forth in his hands. “It seems that my being with you all those years, laying with you when it pleased me, had _infused_ in you a certain…” his eyes looked up with lascivious mockery, “… greatness? royalty? which only now has blossomed like a jealous love or envious humour to remove my own from me. Remember, Henry,” he said, placing the crown on his head, “What in one man may be greatness, in another is a foul misdeed; a crime against God and Nature.” He sat down on the bed’s edge and reached out for Henry to come closer to him. Henry moved over only a little, but it was far enough for Richard to begin tousling his hair. “Do you remember when we were younger?”

* * *

 

Henry could never forget that arrogance of his; as children it had infuriated both him and his father, and had motivated his participation in several uprisings. It was pure spite and rebelliousness. Had he been four months older, he might have had some leverage on the young king in an argument, but when age was not the deciding factor, it was lineage: Richard was the son of the eldest son of Edward, third of that name, and that made him right no matter what.

At that very moment, kneeling before the king, he felt indignation. The Lords Appellant had fallen and every other man he could think of that was involved had been exiled or sentenced to death. No, it wasn’t indignation, it was fear masking itself as rage; he felt like a freshly caged bird desperately trying to escape its confines. All eyes were on him. The king’s sword stretched out towards him and the whole room held its breath for his royal highness’s verdict.

“I will spare you, Henry Bolingbroke.”

Fear soon turned to shame and embarrassment. He would have to live with this cloud above his head that he lived only by the king’s whim, and it was only a matter of time before Richard let him know it. As sure as the sun would set, Richard cleared the room and stood before Henry’s bowed head. Lightly tousling Henry’s hair as he had his favorites, Richard began to laugh.

“Young Bolingbroke, when you return home, thank dear John of Gaunt for his assistance in dispersing those who would see themselves as kings of England while I yet live. It is but for my love of him that you, my haughty, murderous cousin, still breathe.”

The sorrow within Henry was ignited into fury by this mockery. “I wish you had exiled me,” he spat. The sword was still in Richard’s hand, and even though he knew that Richard loved him far, far too much to ever hurt him, the presence of the weapon still filled him with uneasiness and his vocal cords clenched to hide his anger.

“Perhaps one day, so you will learn to miss us as we miss our friends whom we’ll never see again, due to your jealousy.” Henry looked up at Richard, who was no longer looking at him but through him. “Despite your behavior, Henry, or perhaps because of it I know you love me. Why else eliminate all those who had been dear to me?”

“Your flatterers were tyrants and degenerates, my lord. As one must leech out all distemper, so we bled from you the charlatans that did you harm.”

“How fitting to compare yourself to a leech; you who would suck from my veins the position given me by God. You have been a leech before, receiving my flesh and through some joyous industry taking in the wine as well; are you so easily changed, sweet Henry, that even though you are the son of Gaunt your loyalty is waned by such as them? Shall you wax great in my favor only to again betray me for the want of this, my crown?”

Henry began to speak, but was interrupted by a kiss. Richard held him tight, letting the sword clang to the floor. He felt the warm embrace of his former friend as if things had never changed between them, as if the multiple men he had been forgotten for and had been shamed in front of were but fictions of a jealous mind and again the world contained only him and the one he cared for most.

 

“Peace, give that no answer; let me think awhile that you still love me as once you did,” he said with a wry smile. He stood up once again and took up the sword which he had let fall. “Will you return home with your father or stay here with me?” Henry hesitated and Richard looked down at him with much colder eyes. “Arise! Arise!” he said impatiently. “Unless you stay upon your knee for some matter much less grave…”

Henry bolted to his feet and found himself eye to eye with his sovereign lord. “The time is past, I think, that we should talk of graves, my lord.”

“Yet would you, to my pleasure, fill up mine honor’s grave? It hath so long lain unattended, pining for fulfillment.” He pulled Henry closer, still grasping the sword and tickling the small of his back with its guard.

As Richard’s warm breath tickled the hairs on Henry’s neck, young Bolingbroke bristled and stuttered an excuse for why he must not stay, although he could not come up with a reason, only that he absolutely could not stay the night. Richard was inflamed with rage and hurled him back to his knees.

“Lift up your hair and lay bare your neck that our sword may view its target well!” he shouted, raising the sword high above his head. “What is it that keeps you? Shall I do as you have taught me and amputate all that which sickens thee to so despise my company?" His eyes were wild with fury and bore deep into Henry, stirring up again that fear he had before. "Be it your family or beloved Gaunt, your land, your moveables, your properties, your fortunes, I shall cut it off from you; and with that, your illness, adorn myself to purify it so that you should love me!” As his voice reverberated in the stone hall, he looked up to the ceiling and his sword’s hilt, then slowly brought it down and fell to his knees to lay his head upon Bolingbroke’s lap, wetting it with tears.

Terrified by the rapid change in Richard’s disposition, Henry turned him over and held him tight, rubbing his back, trying to calm him down. He had not often seen him in such a state; in fact he could not recall such an episode since adolescence, but he had admittedly been very distant since Richard had begun to prefer other men to himself.

The two of them sat on the ground, clinging to one another. Richard quietly whispered an apology and broke away, once again taking hold of the sword but this time as though it were an object foreign to him. “To think that I would threaten so fine a head and neck with such an instrument… it would be a profanation.” Richard placed his warm hand on Henry’s neck, stroking it and kissing him on the forehead. “For swords are better saved for bedding, as are a head and neck. I would not have such a head impaled upon a spike for all to see, but only for myself, and no such spike as should deprive you of the joys of love and life. Forgive my humour, but I have lost so much, I cannot bear to think I’ll lose you now to some trivial matter while I retire to mourn in privacy.”

At last, Henry heard what he had so longed to hear: he was needed, wanted, and could serve him whom he loved, whom he had fought so hard to seize from those pretenders to his love while he was living heir. Henry embraced him and kissed him passionately. “Tonight my lord, these heads of mine and that long neck, my sword, are yours for now and evermore.”

And with that, Henry saw Richard smile with sincerity for perhaps the first time in his life.

* * *

 

Richard had slipped beneath the sheets and held King Henry as he had so many nights, resting his head upon his shoulder. “I think your memory perhaps is flawed,” he said with his usual mockery.

“Undoubtedly; for too long after that I thought that I would be the only man taken to your chamber, but it was not two months until you had surrounded yourself with fops and knaves such as the Lords Appellant had disposed of, and again was I left to a bed devoid of royalty.”

“And still it is so!” he spat. “Do you think this crown upon my head is so easily got? It shall be mine and mine alone until I trade it for that crown which Christ shall give me at the gates of Paradise!”

Henry sat up, looking at Richard, slightly shocked. “You gave it me yourself!”

Richard got out of bed, and faced away from Henry in tense silence. His Majesty rose and went to cling to his old lover when he was caught by surprise and pushed back onto the bed, pinned down by Richard. “Is this how you repay me, son of Gaunt? By painting yourself anew, to cheat my regal light while you wax large in pride and fury? Did I not say that I would seize all that which kept you from me? And here you are, yet I am not; I am abused and kept at bay, am shamed before my people. You do o’erturn heaven to unfix our stellar spheres thus: you are, as ever, the inconstant moon, but now you force the Sun to set when it was at its zenith? You see I am not feeble, Henry Bolingbroke, defamer of that name, so how is it you drag the young Sun down into the dust?”

“Help! Murder!” cried Henry, praying someone was nearby to help him.

“What is this, sweet Bolingbroke?” Richard asked with a grin across his face that seethed with rage and mischief. “Think you I would hurt my noble cousin? I can scarce protect myself from you, and all the harm which I can imagine has already been played upon you, for I did try to shame your proud heart for daring to seize my crown; seize it you did. I played the silent martyr, but you would not look at my performance for your freshly regal eyes were turned, like Narcissus, upon the image of yourself the people painted to most grandiose effect.” At this Richard released his grip on King Henry and moved towards the window.

"Why should I have reduced your exile but for love of you? Your inheritance, which had nearly kept you from me that night, was the best thing I could think of to bring you back to me. So here you are! The great Sun of Bolingbroke! And I... am conveyed where e'er you'll have me. At last you've hemmed me in as hounds trap the fox and sent my wife home to France. Your father is no longer here to save me from your power, so what had you to fear by letting me remain the rightful king as once the Lords Apellant did? If ever you did love me, why am I sent to Pomfret as a prisoner and not here with you as king?"

Henry, in awe, could make no answer and was given no space for one.

“Mark how you have undone me, good Henry. I am now made a shadow by the full, stolen grandeur of the Moon, and shades are not meant to walk as I do on the earth.” He opened the window and stood upon the sill, wryly commenting on how the king was now eclipsed. Henry reached out to him, but did not approach him too close for fear of making him fall; his shock stopping his mouth. “The moon is setting, Henry. Enjoy your greatness now, for your day of glory will soon be over and from here it shall only wane until your borrowed majesty is but hollow, joyless, and accursed. I do not give you my crown, for it is prematurely seized from me, yet you shall have it.”

Richard let go of the window and the room became brighter. Henry rushed forward, but the light became so great that it seared his eyes and burned into his brain. For all his screaming, it could not cover the heart-rending crunch he heard. He sank to the ground, crying and shrieking as though he were a schoolboy, clutching his temples. His head felt just about to explode when he thought to lay it on the cold ground.

_“Great king! Great king!”_

Henry shot upright, feeling around him and finding that all had been a terrifying dream. The room was dark, as was the sky, still cloudy and starless; what little light there was came from the ground below, the same source as the shouting. The window was closed, and so he was confirmed in knowing that all had been a dream. He went over and opened it.

_“Great king, within this coffin I present_

_Thy buried fear: herein all breathless lies_

_The mightiest of thy greatest enemies,_

_Richard of Bordeaux, by me hither brought.”_

The sight of the mangled corpse, bruised and bloody with arrows still sticking out of him, his frame emaciated beyond the point of any illness’ doing, brought tears to Henry’s eyes and such a feeling of disgust in his stomach that he feared it might empty itself and with it empty his chest of all its organs and the prickling shards of his beating yet shattered heart. Shutting the window without answer, he broke down into bitter tears and wished himself like Niobe to be turned into stone to weep eternally for this, his greatest loss.


End file.
